Good Writers Quotes - Page 2

• Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

  Francis Bacon

  Teacher, Military, Reading

  Essays "Of Studies" (1625)

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• To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

  Anne Lamott

  Philosophy, Writing, Thinking

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.107, Anchor

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• A writer is a performer as well. A writer isn't the literary department. That gets tried on but nothing's a script unless a good writer goes away and does his thing alone.

  William Monahan

  Scripts, Doe, Wells

  "Exclusive: William Monahan Candidly Discusses THE GAMBLER, His Severe Bike Accident Earlier This Year, His Approach to Writing, MOJAVE, VENGEANCE, John Le Carre’s A DELICATE TRUTH, Television, and More". Interview with Steve "Frosty" Weintraub, collider.com. December 12, 2014.

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• Literature is a place for generosity and affection and hunger for equals - not a prizefight ring. We are increased, confirmed in our medium, roused to do our best, by every good writer, every fine achievement. Would we want one good writer or fine book less? The sense of writers being pitted against each other is bred primarily by the workings of the commercial marketplace, and by critics lauding one writer at the expense of another while ignoring the existence of nearly all.

  Tillie Olsen

  Book, Generosity, Achievement

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.174, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• I didn't become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don't just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.

  Louis Sachar

  Book, Mean, Stories

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• A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Reading, People, Friendly

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.87

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• I don't care whether they're men or women, that's bullshit. A good writer can get into any gender, can get into any mouth. When I write I may be a Brando creep, or a girl laying on the floor, or a Japanese tourist, or a slob like Richard Speck. You have to be a chameleon when you're writing.

  Patti Smith

  Girl, Writing, Men

  Source: www.oceanstar.com

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• You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.

  Anatole France

  Writing, Editing, Sentences

  "Anatole France Himself: A Boswellian Record by His Secretary". Book by Jean-Jacques Brousson, 1925.

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• The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Writing, Feelings, Three

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

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• Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.

  Larry L. King

  Eye, Writing, Leaving

  Larry L. King (1987). “None but a blockhead: on being a writer”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• What makes a good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious. Suspicion marks the real difference between the man who wants to write honest history and the one who'd rather write a good story.

  Jim Bishop

  Real, Writing, Men

  "Talk With Jim Bishop" by Lewis Nichols, www.nytimes.com. February 6, 1955.

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• If you are a good writer - and I think I am - you are able to handle any kind of group and imagine their lives.

  Earl Hamner, Jr.

  Thinking, Groups, Able

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• For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

  Northrop Frye

  Writing, People, Giving

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.451, University of Toronto Press

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• My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.

  Gene Hackman

  Uncles, Writing, Grandfather

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• Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

  Edward Albee

  Book, Writing, Reality

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.48, Da Capo Press

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• I think that money is devoted to serious journalism, with analysis, interestingly presented, by good writers can still sell newspapers.

  Phillip Knightley

  Thinking, Analysis, Serious

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• At the same time that you've got to open yourself up to the fact that experience is going to teach you year after year, decade after decade. I remember I very badly wanted to write a newspaper column when I was only 21 years old, and I went to my editor and told him that, and he said, "You're a really good writer, but you haven't lived long enough to be qualified to live out loud."

  Anna Quindlen

  Writing, Years, Editors

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• This is the life I live, and this is the stuff I experience. And like any good writer, I should just write about what goes in my life and what goes on around me. So that's what I chose to do.

  Sune Rose Wagner

  Writing, Goes On, Stuff

  "The Raveonettes". Interview with Stephen M. Deusner, pitchfork.com. February 5, 2008.

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• You can't be both a writer and a politician, at least not a good writer. A writer must always tell the truth as he sees it. And the politician must never give the game away.

  Gore Vidal

  Games, Giving, Telling The Truth

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

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• I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much.

  Robert Barry

  Teacher, Writing, Stories

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, World, Want

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• A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Writing, People, Style

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• Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer. That's a larger package - a matter of character. Golfing is more than keeping the left arm straight. Every good golfer is a complex engine that runs on ability, ego, determination, discipline, patience, confidence, and other qualities that are self-taught. So it is with writers and all creative artists. If their values are solid their work is likely to be solid.

  William Zinsser

  Running, Determination, Character

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• Thinking is a great joy for a good writer and a great torture for the bad one!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Thinking, Joy, Torture

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• When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn't take along any good writers.

  Mary Travers

  Rocks, Fads, Changed

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